


What Comes in the Night

by Akitachan



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-A Game of Thrones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 02:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11659941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akitachan/pseuds/Akitachan
Summary: "Beautiful, willful, and dead before her time."Lyanna was all of these things, and more. Mostly, she belonged to herself, and gave freely of herself. This was her greatest gift, and ultimately, her greatest downfall.





	What Comes in the Night

The creature came to her at night, and only in her dreams.

She couldn’t remember when it started, or why it had, but it had been during her mother’s pregnancy, just as Benjen was weaning.

The creature looked like a direwolf but with huge, horrible wings that dripped blood. He left red pawprints in his wake. 

Grey eyes, dark fur. His wings were large silvery things that faded from dark fur into large lizard scales, like dragon wings. 

When she told Old Nan how the wolf-creature came to her in dreams, the faithful servant had simply shushed her and sent her off to play, muttering about the Stark children and their overactive imaginations. “Little Lord Brandon in particular, Seven help us,” Lyanna thought she’d heard Nan mutter as she changed her bedsheets.

The strangest thing about the dream-wolf wasn’t his shape, or even the blood that occasionally oozed from his wings. He never harmed Lyanna, in her dreams. 

He simply followed her, trotting behind with silent paws, in the strange weirwood forest of her dreamscape. 

The dark direwolf would wait patiently as she inspected the sacred trees, climbed rocks, investigated burrows and fought imaginary battles with small, fallen boughs.

She wondered where his pack was. He was always alone, waiting for her in her dreams. The dream direwolf had seemed lonely. 

She had been frightened, at first, of what the dreams meant. 

Lyanna had told Brandon once, in hushed tones during dinner so Father and Mother couldn’t hear, about the wolf. He’d convinced her it was a prophecy, that a real direwolf would come and eat her up. 

She’d screamed and had tried not to cry as Brandon laughed his big stupid head off.

Father had given Brandon a stern talking to, and Mother had boxed his ears, much to his loud complaints, “I was only joking-!”

Brandon was an idiot.

She’d never mentioned it again, not even to Ned who’d quietly inquired as to what was wrong after supper. 

Months passed, and Mother’s belly grew bigger and bigger. Lyanna wanted a little sister, not another brother. 

Brandon was too loud and annoying, pretending that he was already a man even though his first whiskers had barely begun to sprout. Ned was gentle and kind, and didn’t treat her like a child, but he was always busy with Father or Brandon. Benjen was too little to be interesting yet.

Lyanna wanted a sister she could lead on adventures, teaching her about the perfect snowballs, where to hide behind the stables to spook Brandon and Ned when they went riding, how to wreathe blue winter roses into flower crowns. 

But the Seven didn’t listen to Lyanna’s prayers. They rarely listened to Starks’ prayers, in particular, it seemed.

The day came, and Mother was ushered off to her chambers by Old Nan, the midwife and the maester. 

Father went to pray in the godswood, and Brandon grew anxious of Mother’s wailing and crying. “I thought I’d heard enough when you three came along,” he complained to Ned. 

The boys rode off without asking Lyanna if she wanted to join, so, a bit apprehensive about her baby sister, Lyanna joined her Father for a bit in the godswood to pray for a safe delivery-and a sister, not a brother, she reminded the Mother gently.

She joined her father again, in the fourteenth hour. Father had not left the weirwood in all this time. ThE screaming began to die down after fourteen long hours of labor. Nan hobbled, breathless, into the weirwood. 

Something was wrong. 

There were no screams from the newborn. Mother had grown strangely silent, suddenly. Lord Stark ran past Old Nan who struggled to follow, and Lyanna collapsed.

The dream direwolf approached Lyanna as she woke in the weirwood dreamscape. 

She watched in horror as the silvery white scales of his dragon wings sloughed off, shedding. The silver scales were replaced by black feathers, dark as a moonless night–

crow’s feathers.

The direwolf howled at a silver moon, as snow began to fall softly in the weirwood.


End file.
